WINTER 2020 IN THIS ISSUE ORLANDO CONSORT THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC February 4 MARK & MAGGIE O'CONNOR AMERICAN CLASSICS February 14 GRUPO CORPO February 20–22 NIYAZ THE FOURTH LIGHT PROJECT February 28 HÉLÈNE GRIMAUD March 4 Winter 2020 | Volume 16, No. 4 FEATURE In This Issue Feature 3 The Joy and Value of a Student Matinee Dialogue 9 Karen Lund Returns to ‘The Shop Around the Corner’ with ‘She Loves Me’ at Village Theatre 13 Rachel Atkins Makes ‘The Turn of the Screw’ Her Own at Book-It Intermission Brain Transmission 12 Test yourself with our trivia quiz! Upcoming Events 15 Winter 2020 PAUL HEPPNER President Encore Stages is an Encore arts MIKE HATHAWAY Senior Vice President program that features stories KAJSA PUCKETT Vice President, about our local arts community Sales & Marketing alongside information about GENAY GENEREUX Accounting & performances. Encore Stages is Office Manager a publication of Encore Media Production Group. 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All rights reserved. ©2019 Encore Media Group. Reproduction without written permission is prohibited. ANGELA NICKERSON ANGELA 2 FEATURE Students at a performance of Vietgone at Seattle Rep. The Joy and Value of a Student Matinee by DANIELLE MOHLMAN There’s nothing more honest than a teenage audience. and young people are interested in They will laugh, but only if you’re funny. They will gasp, POC stories. They’re interested in plays with music. They’re interested but only if you move them. And they will engage, but only in things that are challenging if you drop all pretense and meet them on their level. in new and exciting ways.” At the time of our interview, Reed had a wait list of 600 students for the student matinees I was lucky enough to witness “At Seattle Rep, we don’t of Jitney by August Wilson. A this firsthand at Seattle Rep’s first necessarily target our shows to wait list for Shout Sister Shout! student matinee of the 2019-20 a young audience—or even to a was also forming. And while season. The cast of Indecent wasn’t family audience,” said Alex Lee cultivating sold-out performances accustomed to a 10:30 a.m. curtain, Reed, Seattle Rep’s youth engage- is an exciting part of Reed’s job, but they matched the audience’s ment manager. But even so, there’s he’s always thinking about the energy with their own. After the always an incredible amount of educational component. Each performance, many students stayed interest from the schools Reed student matinee is programmed for a post-show discussion with works with. This season, the only around Washington’s Common the cast and musicians, where the play that doesn’t have a student Core State Standards Initiative, audience engaged in what felt more matinee is True West. “I’m probably complete with a play guide that like a conversation than a Q&A— not supposed to say, but these kids can be taught in the classroom covering everything from Jewish get enough plays about middle- and additional support from identity to intimacy choreography. aged white guys. School groups Seattle Rep teaching artists. ANGELA NICKERSON ANGELA encorespotlight.com 3 “As an artist, director and SEASON SPONSORS educator, that’s my jam,” Reed said. “Theatre is for everyone, you know?” And while Seattle Rep doesn’t THE program their season with young audiences in mind, Seattle Children’s Theatre (SCT) certainly does. It’s not uncommon for SCT to program four to six student matinees into each week of the performance schedule. “That’s sisterhood the bare minimum that we’ll do,” OF REVOheroes said Darioush Mansourzadeh, MEDIA SPONSORS SCT’s school shows associate. Mansourzadeh added that he’s become a bit of an expert on the Seattle Public Schools bus system, scheduling student matinees around the transporta- tion needs of the district. “Bus LUTIOdrivers have a very important job, and I don’t think a lot of BY LAUREN GUNDERSON people respect that community.” Despite being a member of the marketing department, education JAN 16 – FEB 9 artswest.org is top of mind for Mansourzadeh. Like Reed, Mansourzadeh is always thinking about how SCT’s season NISTS ties into the national and state education standards. Black Beauty, which opened SCT’s 2019-20 season, centers on empathy toward animals, so the theatre began thinking about how to tie empathy into the classroom curriculum. “What does it mean to be kind to someone who may never know your kindness?” Mansourzadeh asked. But the student matinee experience doesn’t end at curtain call. Each performance has a post-show element that’s indi- vidually suited to the show and the age of the audience. For Balloonacy, a one-man play written for 3- to 6-year-olds, the post-show element was learning a song. For The Diary of Anne Frank, which was geared toward a middle school audience, things went a little differently. “The middle schoolers were a little more rambunctious during the show, and it really affected the cast,” Mansourzadeh said. “One of the cast members went out and spoke about empathy and sympathy and how this play relates to society today. We actually 4 had one middle school where every single student wrote an apology letter to the cast, which was really nice for the cast to see. Sometimes learning in theatre isn’t what we expect it to be, but that was a learning moment for them.” At the Pacific Northwest Ballet (PNB), filling the nearly 3,000 seats in McCaw Hall with students is a logistical feat in itself. In addition to an annual student matinee of George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker ® and a field trip-friendly excerpt of one of PNB’s story ballets each February, Shannon Barnes, director of community education, partners with eleven schools to provide Discover Dance, their in-school residency. It’s a residency that goes beyond what’s happening on stage, giving students a full view of what it takes to produce a ballet at PNB. “Part of our philosophy with all of our programming is looking at all the ways people make ballet and dance happen,” Barnes said. “We’re talking about stage crew; we’re talking about the people whose job it is to answer the phones here— and create posters and do the mar- keting. The arts can be the person on stage, but do you like to draw? You can be a costume designer. We’re really peeling back the layers and being transparent about what it takes to put on a performance.” It’s also about demystifying the experience of attending a ballet. Barnes knows that the work she does extends far beyond the classroom or even that field trip to McCaw Hall. She’s interested in meeting students and their families where they are. And one way she’s done that is by translating The Nutcracker study guide that students receive into five languages—thinking ahead to what the primary language of the child’s household might be. “That family engagement, even if it’s as simple as, ‘We see you, we want you to share in this with your student,’ is important,” Barnes said. “The ideal would be for every student coming to the matinee to have a pre-performance workshop 6 “School groups and young people are interested in POC stories. They’re interested in plays with music. They’re interested in things that are challenging in new and exciting ways.” — Alex Lee Reed and a study guide in their home language. And that’s the goal.” And PNB is working towards that goal in whatever way they can. This year’s student matinee of Cinderella will include live captioning for the show’s host. “And that just feels really good to be able to have that available,” Barnes said. “Just like, no question. We don’t need someone to ask for that accommodation. Here it is. And it’s available because we recog- nize that in a theatre of that size, someone’s going to benefit from it.” Barnes added that this live- captioning technology will bleed into the repertory season, with some pre- and post-show conversations captioned. THE MAN BEHIND A LEGEND WEST COAST PREMIERE! When I asked if Barnes had a What if you could realize one last dream before favorite memory from the student you die? While the body of tormented bebop In English with English subtitles. matinees she’s facilitated, her innovator Charlie “Yardbird” Parker lies Evenings 7:30 PM answer was strikingly similar to unidentified in a New York City morgue, his ghost Sundays 2:00 PM travels back to the heyday of Birdland, the jazz Mansourzadeh’s. “That line of club named after him. As he struggles to Featuring members of Seattle buses is pretty impressive,” Barnes complete his final masterpiece, the legendary Symphony Orchestra.